Judge decides piracy may boost sales

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It’s not often that a judge presiding over a piracy case paints a positive light on the act, but that’s precisely what happened recently in Spain.

The “fact” that piracy and copyright infringement causes many millions of dollars in losses to the entertainment industry every year has been a favorite sounding point of anti-piracy types for years. As TorrentFreak points out, that’s despite some very important folks in the industry not being convinced that file sharing hurts. New EMI chief Douglas Merrill, for example, rather surprisingly acknowledged that studies have shown file sharing actually helps boost artists’ sales.

This doesn’t come as a surprise to the MPAA. Just this summer it was revealed that they did their level best to bury a report showing that pirates are actually some of its best customers.

While this particular case in Spain may have taken place on a fairly small stage (a district court), it’s still significant when a judge decides to take the industry to task for its claims. There are other possibilities than, say, a download ending with a download and the loss of a sale for an artist. If a downloader decides an album or movie is particularly good, they may decide to spring for the genuine article. It’s a fairly straightforward line of reasoning, but not one you often hear coming from a judge’s mouth.

At the end of the day, the fact that the music and film industry’s claims of astronomical damages from file sharing are being called into question is a very good thing. Who knows, with a few more judges handing down rulings like this in the future, the MPAA might decide it’s time to stop threatening octogenarians with thousands of dollars in fines for grabbing movies via BitTorrent — which you just know grandma is really using.